MOTD
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The image above is a "Message Of The Day" or MOTD. It's presented as a sort of 'splash screen' when logging into a remote system via SSH. This article is about how to create your own custom MOTD.
The Ubuntu distribution introduced the update-motd framework which basically assembles the motd from the series of scripts in /etc/update-motd.d
You should read the motd manpage (which you can also access in your console via man update-motd Sadly, the motd man page doesn't even refer to update-motd which is where the details are!?)
Essentially, you create a file in /etc/update-motd.d with a numbered prefix and no suffix. The first line of output should be blank, and the last line of the script should be a carriage return.
cat /etc/update-motd.d/99-footer
1 #!/bin/sh
2 #
3 # modified from the MediaWiki-Vagrant setup for an installation of MediaWiki
4
5 rainbow_pipe () {
6 local i=0 c
7 while IFS= read data; do
8 c=$(( 31 + ($i % 7) ))
9 IFS=";" printf "\033[%sm" $c 1
10 printf "%s\033[0m\n" "${data}"
11 i=$((i+1))
12 done
13 }
14 rainbow_pipe <<'EOM'
15
16 /
17 .,. /
18 ,mmmmn ___ ___ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
19 ,._ .,###"nI) | \\/ | | |(_) | | | |(_)| | (_)
20 # ########### | . . | ___ __| | _ __ _ | | | | _ | | __ _
21 # ############"" | |\\/| | / _ \\ / _` || | / _` || |/\\| || || |/ /| |
22 " #### # ./ | | | || __/| (_| || || (_| |\\ /\\ /| || < | |
23 #'(# # " \\_| |_/ \\___| \\__,_||_| \\__,_| \\/ \\/ |_||_|\\_\\|_|
24 # ") #
25 #, '" '"
26 EOM
27 echo
28 printf " * MediaWiki is located at \033[33;1m/var/www/w/\033[0m.\n"
29 printf " * To interactively evaluate PHP and MediaWiki code, run '\033[33mhhvmsh\033[0m'.\n"
30 printf " * For a database shell, run '\033[33mmysql\033[0m'.\n"
31 printf " * To execute MediaWiki maintenance scripts, run '\033[33mphp -f ...\033[0m' in the maintenance/ folder.\n"
32 printf " * For help, visit \033[34;4mhttps://www.mediawiki.org\033[0m or \033[33m#mediawiki\033[0m on chat.freenode.net.\n\n"
33 printf " * For paid help, visit \033[34;4mhttp://eQuality-Tech.com\033[0m or email \033[33minfo@eQuality-Tech.com\033[0m\n\n"
34 # there is a newline here. ignore this comment -- it's for illustration only
